9 questions with Mauricio Porras & Sylvain Ferrière
HERO was founded by Mauricio Porras and Sylvain Franc de la Ferrière after they noticed that civic leaders working on systemic climate action lacked the infrastructure to sustain and scale their efforts long-term. They created a way for funders and citizens to support civic leaders to accelerate laws, policies and treaties, with a systemic effect.
We don’t usually fund the same initiative twice – but HERO is an exception. HERO took our challenge to heart, sharpened their model, and produced results that exceeded our expectations. That’s why we’re backing the Global Carbon Circle for a second round, in the hope that it can scale. Here, they tell us about the successes of the first Circle, and what they’re hoping to achieve this year.
Tell me about the new Global Carbon Circle compared to the first Carbon Circle.
Sylvain:The original vision of the Carbon Circle was to bring together leaders across geographies and approaches — to share what’s working, identify patterns, and help each other replicate successful strategies. There are three main pillars:
- Accelerating fossil-fuel phase-out: stopping new oil and gas projects.
- Strengthening climate policies and treaties: making sure legislation enables a fair transition.
- Framing climate action as an economic opportunity.
2: What successes have you seen with the first pillar in the original Carbon Circle this past year?
Sylvain: In the UK, civic leaders mobilized for the legal challenge that led to a landmark court ruling that a permit given to Rosebank — the largest unexploited oil and gas field in the North Sea — was unlawful. That means operators will have to seek fresh authorisation.
They convinced the court that emissions from burning oil and gas (scope 3 emissions) must be assessed alongside emissions from the site itself (scope 1). That makes it far less likely the permit will be granted, since climate groups argue that total emissions would exceed the UK’s legally binding Carbon Budgets. There are now discussions in the Circle about how to apply this ruling elsewhere in Europe and around the world.
Another circle member, Patience, has been working on a new approach to stop the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which has displaced entire communities over the past decade. She interviewed affected people all along the pipeline and brought their stories to forums and conferences such as COP — humanising the issue rather than framing it purely as a climate problem.
3: And the second pillar – strengthening climate policies and treaties – are there some success stories from that?
Sylvain: In Poland, wind power had been blocked for 20 years due to outdated legislation. Circle member Wiktoria helped campaign to change that, allowing wind development to resume.
In Bogotá, Juan is rolling out one of the most ambitious climate plans in Latin America. Working with 100 civil society organisations, they built a plan to reduce the city’s emissions by 45–50% by 2035. They’ve already replaced the entire city bus fleet with 1500+ electric vehicles, one of the largest bus fleets outside of China.
A third example: German marine scientist Franziska has been working with leading researchers on carbon removal. They proposed open seaweed farming as a nature-based pathway to cut emissions at scale — and argued that clear governance frameworks and public debate will be essential to doing it responsibly.
But rather than publishing a paper and hoping people read it, she partnered with Hans-Josef Fell — a former German Green Party MP who wrote the original law around governments buying renewable energy at a fixed price. Franziska moved from “I’m writing a scientific paper” to directly thinking about policy — what procurement mechanisms and financing instruments could unlock seaweed farming at scale. It’s a powerful model for linking science to implementation.
4: Finally – the third pillar, framing climate action as an economic opportunity. How’s that gone this past year?
Lucie Brown and Charlotte-Howell Jones, both leaders from Parents for the Future in the Carbon Circle have been using comedy to great effect, reaching hundreds of thousands of views. They filmed visits to MPs alongside their children, asking questions about renewables from their children’s perspective. Suddenly it’s not a confrontational meeting — it’s a conversation about what kind of world we want our kids to grow up in. That reframing gives everyone in the circle a new way to approach their own work.
5: And what are the ambitions for the new circle?
Two themes we want to double down on:
The first is framing climate action as an economic opportunity. For example, we have leaders working on community-owned energy. Many of those leaders have the vision that communities should be able to sell excess energy at lower prices to low-income families — something that doesn’t happen under current UK regulations, which are top-down, built by the government, and require fixed electricity prices for all customers. Community initiatives think about equity from the start, because they know their neighbours. Cheaper energy for those that can’t pay for it, a fairer system. Who wouldn’t want that?
The second is a new pillar around finance and economics — an underused but highly effective lever. One of our leaders worked on getting the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, worth $15 billion, to stop funding fossil fuels. Working with pension funds, insurers and public procurement mechanisms to shift capital away from fossil fuels is enormously powerful.
A concrete opportunity: the Netherlands is going to set up a National Agency for Disruptive Innovation. This will be the Dutch equivalent of DARPA, the US federal agency that funds early-stage, high-risk technology, and which gave us the internet and GPS. We need to make sure that this will support emerging climate technology — and that’s typically the kind of policy window the Circle exists to act on.
6. What learnings and outcomes did you notice from the first Carbon Circle?
Sylvain: Three things stand out. First, leaders need to connect to people’s everyday lives. Comedy, humanizing stories, framing wind energy as a jobs opportunity — it’s not an abstract CO2 problem, it’s a job opportunity problem. That’s what moves people.
Second, leaders need to combine approaches. Legal strategy alone isn’t enough — you also need to mobilize citizens. One of our leaders used digital tools that let citizens file tens of thousands of complaints to a regulator, helping to block a deep-sea mining project in the Gulf of Mexico. One letter wouldn’t have done it.
Third: we’re seeing the archetype of the leader who wins. We call them the “connective tissue” — someone who can bridge highly technical subjects and mass mobilization campaigning. They can mobilise a million people and sit across a table from an MP. These bridge-builders are rare, and we’ll be looking for them for the new circle.
7: How do the Circles actually work?
Mauricio: The real magic happens in the monthly calls. It’s a peer-to-peer environment where trust builds over time. HERO creates the conditions for knowledge-sharing to happen across regions and movements.
Sylvain: We give leaders both financial support and a space to ask: why is this working? What’s blocking it from scaling? What can we do, together or alone, to spread it across borders?
We’ve noticed the leaders shifting away from top-down communication — the “Stop doing this, change that” model. Leaders have instead started practising deep canvassing: going door-to-door not to persuade, but to listen. Lisette shared her experience of this in a circle call, and discovered that Louisa had been doing the same thing independently, on the other side of the world. That cross-pollination — realising others are finding the same things work — is enormously validating.
8: What will CarbonFix’s grant allow you to do that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do?
Sylvain: CarbonFix has been more than a funder — they’ve been a genuine thought partner. What’s significant is that it allows us to sharpen the Circle template itself. With them we’ve documented what works — the right level of financial support, the coordination structures, the support mechanisms — to better scale the model. That means CarbonFix’s grant doesn’t just fund this Circle; it creates a blueprint that can attract additional funders and multiply impact across future Circles.
Civic leaders are rarely short of ideas or commitment. What they lack is time, stability, and the infrastructure to connect meaningfully with peers. CarbonFix’s funding directly addresses all three.
This second grant allows us to go further. We want to scale this model — bringing in new leaders, targeting bigger policy windows, and building on everything we learned. We don’t take it lightly that CarbonFix made an exception to fund us twice. That vote of confidence matters, and we intend to make it count.
9: What are the biggest challenges for civic leaders?
Sylvain: Lack of resources and funding, burnout and institutional blockages — all of which HERO mitigates by providing financial stability and a safe space.
Mauricio: This work can feel lonely. Even leaders building huge movements can feel isolated. The emotional toll is real and largely invisible.
These are people who feel vulnerable — who are sometimes threatened or attacked. To open up, you need a space of genuine trust. That’s hard to find elsewhere. HERO builds that space, and it’s one of the things we’re most proud of. We also connect leaders with coaches to work on their resilience.
That human dimension is almost impossible to capture in a report. But it’s real.
